I am a Burmese exile taking a near-permanent refuge in New York and Sydney. Here are my essays about Burma and anything else I feel like writing about. And posting the articles I like from selected sites. Bridging Burma to the world this Blog is more of a Politically-Oriented Literary Blog than a Plain News Blog or a Sophisticated Thoughts Blog.

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Erdogan Turns Turkish Schools To Islamic Madrassas

What Turkish Islamists Understand about
'Education': It is customary for Turkish TV crews to interview young students
at the start of their mid-term holidays, with the cliché closing question
invariably being, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" This
year's school holiday in January was no exception. One interview, however,
produced a chilling portrait of a girl, aged just 7 or 8.

"I have big goals," she answered the interviewer. "They
will get bigger and bigger. Step by step," she said. The girl said she
wanted to start by becoming a district or village head. Then a lawmaker, a
minister, prime minister and finally the president of Turkey.

Up to this point, TV viewers must have watched her with amusement. Then
the reporter asked her: "What would you do if you became the
president?" In a calculated, tranquil tone, the girl answered: "I
would reinstate the death penalty".

She was merely one of the products of
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ambitious social engineering project to
"raise devout generations". A proud moment in President Erdogan's
educational plans to "raise devout generations”.

In 2013, then Prime Minister Erdogan's
government made it compulsory for students in fourth grade and higher to take
up "religion" classes. In religion classes, the Turkish curriculum
almost exclusively teaches the virtues of Sunni Islam, but non-Muslim and Alevi
students also must attend these classes.

In 2014, Turkey's National Education
Council recommended making Ottoman Turkish a compulsory course at all schools.
After an uproar in the secular public, the council recommended making the
Ottoman language a compulsory course at religious "imam schools known as
Madrassa" and an elective course at other schools.

In a 2015 speech, Erdogan boasted that since his government came to
power in 2002, the number of imam school (Madrassa) students had risen from a
mere 60,000 to 1.2 million.

In its latest "Islamist
touch" on the education system, Turkey's Education Ministry devised plans
to include renowned Turkish and Muslim scientists in its new draft curriculum.
Under the plan, works by Muslim scientists will be taught in physics classes,
in addition to the works of scientists such as Newton, Einstein and Maxwell.

For instance, ninth-grade students will
learn the works of al-Khazini and al-Biruni on density. In their force and
motion course, they will learn Newton's laws of motion, but Avicenna's works on
the concept of inertia will also be taught.

In tenth grade, students will learn the
work of Ismail al-Jazari on hydrostatic balance and al-Farabi's work on sound
waves. Other touches of "Muslim science" will be the acoustic
features in Mimar Sinan's works of architecture, and Ibn al-Haytham and
Averroës' work on optical systems.

In 11th grade, students will learn
about the scientific aspects of the 15th century cannon developed by Mehmed the
Conqueror. The work of Ismail al-Jazari and the Banu Musa brothers on
mechanical systems, such as levers, will also be taught.

Turkish students need only Koran not science nor arts.

Twelfth grade will feature the 15th
century scientists Ali Qushji and Ulugh Beg's work on space material and their
movements.

The draft, however, is not only about
additions, but also about dropping the names of unwanted characters from the
curriculum. For instance, it removes all mention of world-renowned Turkish
pianist Fazil Say from the 12th grade music class chapter on "Music
Culture", which covers Turkey's Western music composers.

Say has been a vocal critic of
Erdogan's Islamist policies and was subjected to a controversial and
long-lasting blasphemy case, in which he was charged and convicted over tweets
in which he quoted the 11th century Persian poet Omar Khayyam, in 2012.
Appealing his 10-month imprisonment in the case, which was suspended for five
years, Say was acquitted in September 2016 on charges of "insulting
religious beliefs held by a section of society".

All that is normal in a country ruled by an Islamist leader who thinks
all good belongs to the Muslim culture and all evil to the others. In a 2014
speech at a gathering of Muslim leaders from Latin America, Erdogan claimed
that Muslim sailors reached the American continent in 1178 -- exactly 314 years
before Columbus. He also claimed that Columbus, in his memoirs, mentioned the
existence of a mosque atop a hill on the coast of Cuba.

Where do all these Islamization efforts
leave Turkey's education standards? Not, unsurprisingly, in a proud place. The
results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) education
test have revealed some of the most pressing problems in Turkish education.
According to the PISA findings in 2016, Turkey dropped from 44th place to 49th
(out of 72 countries surveyed), compared to the last test in 2012.

The Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that the number of Turkish
15-year-olds who scored below average on the triennial PISA test is three times
higher than the number of students who scored below average in more successful
countries.

Some 31.2% of Turkish students below 15
years of age underperformed in mathematics, sciences and reading. In contrast,
only 10% of students in countries that neared the top of the list
underperformed on math, sciences and reading. Between 2012 and 2016 Turkey's
ranking dropped from 43rd in science to 52nd and from 41st in reading to 50th.

Erdogan does not mind. As long as Turks
are religiously devout, he thinks, scientific failure will not matter. Better
to have a young student like the girl in the TV interview than a thousand
bright Silicon Valley-class young innovators.

(Burak Bekdil, one of Turkey's leading journalists, was just fired from
Turkey's leading newspaper after 29 years, for writing what was taking place in
Turkey for Gatestone. He is a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.)

An 11-year-old schoolgirl said during
an interview after receiving her first term report card that she wants to
become the president of Turkey in order to change the constitution and
reinstate the death penalty for coup plotters.

Apparently coached by her parents, the
girl seemed to be affected by the political atmosphere in Turkey as she said
that she would change the constitution to enable the execution of putschists (plotters
of latest coup against Erdogan’s Islamist Government) even though new laws
cannot be retroactively applied.

When she was asked how she would become
president, the child said that first she wants to be a mukhtar or
village/neighborhood head, then a mayor, deputy, minister, prime minister and
finally the president.

Speaking to mukhtars in September during a meeting at the presidential
palace in Ankara, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said he was the chief mukhtar,
controlling the entire country, an apparent confirmation of claims that he is
seeking to take everything in Turkey under his control.

Nearly 18 million students in primary
and secondary schools in Turkey received their first-term report cards and
began their two-week winter semester break on Friday.

The Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that the number of Turkish
15-year-olds who scored below average on the triennial PISA test is three times
higher than the number of students who scored below average in many other countries.

Some 31.2% of Turkish students below 15
years of age underperformed in mathematics, sciences and reading. In contrast,
only 10% of students in countries that neared the top of the list
underperformed on math, sciences and reading. Between 2012 and 2016 Turkey's
ranking dropped from 43rd to 52nd in science and from 41st to 50th in reading.